


Only Mostly

by drelfina



Series: Mutual Pining [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Founders Era, Humour all over the place, M/M, Mutual Pining, Mutual Unrequited Feelings, Tobirama tries so hard to have no feelings, and I have inappropriate humour, don't read if you don't, it's Tobirama and Madara they totally can do this, read if you trust me, tagging this is really hard, technically probably crack, technically unethical medical practice, there's a TWIST, tobirama has FEELINGS, what do you do when you have to autopsy the one you're in love with?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22488160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drelfina/pseuds/drelfina
Summary: Madara is dead. Not even his own Clan wanted the body.Tobirama asked for his body to do the autopsy so he could study the sharingan.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: Mutual Pining [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598689
Comments: 72
Kudos: 350





	Only Mostly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CreativeSweets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativeSweets/gifts), [evocates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/gifts).



> AHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAH 
> 
> on one hand, inspired by chats I had with Evocates re: Tobirama fucking having to autopsy Madara while pining. On the OTHER HAND, CreativeSweets knew what happened. 
> 
> So, have an unexpected gift, Evocates, i'm pretty sure this is not what you were expecting.

He had, never in a thousand years, in all that he'd lived, thought it'd come to this. 

That he and Madara would be in the same room, all alone, and Madara would be. 

"Silent," Tobirama said, into the quiet of his lab, and the only breathing was his own. 

He put his hands on the tray of his implements and breathed, slowly, made it _even_ , because he couldn't even allow himself to think... think of what other situation of _alone with Madara_ he might have even dared to imagine, let alone hope for. 

But not this. 

Never this. 

Even the Uchiha Clan hadn't wanted him, wanted the body - when they had used to be so meticulous in burning every fallen Uchiha, even Anija had not said anything beyond a dead-eyed stare when Tobirama had said _Give him to me. I could study -_

And now it was just him alone with Madara, and his fingers closed over a scalpel, cold hard metal, and there was no other breath in the lab but his own. 

Breathe, he told himself.

Breathe. Madara wasn't the first dead body he'd had in his lab. This was just another dead body. Just another one with a bloodline limit he'd never gotten to see up close. 

~~Just had it used against him, again and again until he got fast enough he could avoid it~~.

He reached down, hand over Madara's shoulder. He'd never been _this_ close to Madara - never. So he didn't know what to expect, when he reached down and brushed the long thick fall of hair away from his shoulder. 

So soft, he thought. 

Even, he thought, the messy sweep of it against Madara's face, so soft against - 

His knuckles brushed lightly against the sharp, almost haunted curve of Madara's cheek bone, and he almost yanked his hand back at the chilled flesh. 

Cold. Of course he was. He was _dead_. 

But Madara had always been a burning heat shimmer at the edges of his senses, up until he _left_ the Village, and this… this was. 

Nothing. Cold nothing, here, and for once, Tobirama could _touch_ and it was… 

Nothing he'd ever wanted. 

~~Had he even _wanted_?~~

He pressed his hand against the cold metal of his table instead, next to Madara's head, and reminded himself that it was just. Just an autopsy. Like any other. 

Any scientific dissection, any exploratory surgery.

He pulled his hand back, and made himself reach properly for his gloves. The sharingan might be the important… important organs, yes, but there were other systems he should look into. He knew well how the rest of the human body worked, how they might be geared to working with fire-chakra. 

So. From the beginning. 

Easy enough to catalogue the thickened fingerpads - a similar overlap between his own, the reddened palms and fingertips from constant channeling of fire chakra. 

If he used his own fingers to trace such marks rather than the metal rods he had for such purpose - well, Ma- the BODY was still pliable, still not yet subject to rigor mortis, the fine channels and markings were better manipulated with his own touch, shielded by the thin gloves he was using. 

Broad hands, he noted idly, distantly. Big and broad but deft flexible fingers. Calloused at the palms, where he'd manipulated his gunbai like the easy heft of a katana. Both hands, slightly different calloused pattern - he'd use his left hand to start jutsu a little more often than the right, since his right hand was predominantly occupied with his gunbai. 

If he fitted his own palm against Ma- the body's opposing palm, he could measure how they compared, how callouses were almost similar, but note the minute differences. If he ran his thumb up against the length of Mada- the fingers to the tips, he could feel the thickened finger-pads, gauge how big they were, in ratio to the thickness of the fingers. 

He did not curl his fingers against the body's; he made himself lay those hands out, carefully, evenly, by the side, and then turned his attention to the chest. 

He touched, very lightly, the sternum. Firm bone under thin skin, and… and the lungs ought to have been adapted somehow to breathing out fire. 

He'd seen other fire-chakra users of course, he'd seen such… trained adaptations. Those wouldn't be new. But the sharingan were - were so chakra-intensive, they _had_ to be, if so few of them could develop a sharingan, and not so many could use them with the adeptness that Madara and Izuna could on the ever changing scene of a battlefield. 

There had to be other differences, perhaps in the - the other parts. It was… was better, he thought, to check the other systems. Particularly since Ma- Anija had stabbed him in the back, the damage was already there and he should check those first before further deterioration. 

Yes. 

Better that, before cracking open the ribcage, since he knew he'd spend a lot more time on the respiratory system. Better reconstruct the other systems first, compare them… 

Compare them against his own knowledge database. 

He didn't have to think very hard about cutting down from sternum to pelvis, parting the skin to get inside. It was like any other surgery, after this point, he could focus on just examining the wound-site, observing the damage and mentally reconstructing it to what might be normal for others, and what might be normal for Uchiha, and what might be normal for _Madara_. 

The hand grabbing his startled him out of his minutes' long staring, and he'd be _mad_ at himself if - 

"What the hell are you doing?" Madara snarled. 

Tobira blinked up at the angry dark slits of Madara's eyes. 

"That… is unexpected," he said after a moment. 

"The fuck are you doing," Madara repeated. 

Tobirama looked back to where Madara's hand was on his arm and where Tobirama's hands were, well, literally wrist-deep in Madara's guts. 

"... An autopsy," he said honestly. 

Madara made an outraged noise. "Are you blind? Can't you see I'm not dead?!" 

Everyone, Tobirama should have said, was very sure that Madara was dead. Every medical expert that had swarmed Hashirama when he'd brought the body back had given the 'yup, he's definitely dead' signal. 

Instead Tobirama opened his mouth and said, "To be scrupulously honest, I'm actually half blind." 

"Don't go shoving knives into people if you're _blind_!" 

Tobirama looked back at his hands. "Those aren't knives." 

"Hands count too!" 

"If you would let go, please," Tobirama said, "I can take my hands out and actually close you up." 

He paused a moment. "How are you still talking and not screaming in pain?" 

"I am," Madara gritted out, "in gratuitous amounts of _agony_ , you crazy Senju." But he let go of Tobirama's arm, so Tobirama could pull his hands out and then have to go looking for surgical thread and needle. 

He hadn't anticipated, well, _this_ thus hadn't laid out such tools as to _put the body back together_. 

"Hurry UP," Madara snapped. 

"Shut up," Tobirama advised, as he swapped out his gloves for fresh ones because trying to sew up anything with bloody fingers was an exercise in asking for more blood everywhere.

He was, at least, almost as fast in sewing up things as he was in cutting them up, even with his poor eye-sight. "Do you want me to deal with your other wound at the same time?" he asked. 

"What, fucking, wound," Madara growled. 

"The mortal one." 

He could _feel_ Madara's glare drill into his head. 

"You should be grateful I didn't crack open your ribcage first," Tobirama said as he set to work to poking the stab wound and then starting to close it up. 

"Why, so you can steal my heart for _real_?" Madara hissed at him. 

Tobirama paused. "Excuse me?" 

"It's not enough," Madara said, surprisingly eloquent for a man who not five minutes ago tested dead against every measure Tobirama knew, "that my own best friend stabbed me in the back. No, It's also not enough that the man I had been half in love with hates my guts. No, now he wants to shove his hands into my _literal_ guts and _stir_." 

Both of them stared down at the incision that Tobirama had just closed up, silence abrupt and pregnant. 

"I wasn't stirring anything," Tobirama said. 

"For fuck's sake," Madara said. "Give me some fucking anesthetic so I can fuck you into the wall." 

END

**Author's Note:**

> **  
>  Omake   
>  **
> 
> "I strongly advise against sex right after surgery," Tobirama said. "Plus there is the whole question that you were ten minutes ago very much _dead._ How did that happen?" 
> 
> Madara paused from where he was definitely pinning Tobirama against a firm horizontal surface. 
> 
> "It's the sharingan. And I'm not telling you any more. Now shut up."
> 
> * * *
> 
> Hashi: How did you bring him back to life, i TOLD you that jutsu was forbidden! 
> 
> Tobira: it was an accident-! I didn't - Madara, tell him! 
> 
> Madara: .... He brought me back to life. 
> 
> Tobira: THAT WAS NOT HOW IT HAPPENED, ANIJA.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Working title was "Why do you sleep so still?" from _My Lady D'Arbanvill_ by Cat Stevens, but you know, CreativeSweets had a better title, which comes from _Princess Bride_ , the entire quote is, "He's only Mostly Dead!"


End file.
